Archive for March, 2011
Toe Heaven
Yup, that’s how I’d describe our new living room rug. We have a case of happy feet. It’s even more plush and amazing than expected. But before we get to all the juicy rug pics we need to tell you guys how much we love you. The overwhelming support, kindness, and hilarity that you bring into our lives – not only on this morning’s big announcement post, but on the regular – is humbling, inspiring, and completely and utterly amazing. So smooch. I just virtually kissed your face. Oh snap.
Now back to Big Green (since it is St. Patrick’s Day)…
Although it’s so thick that you’d think tumbleweeds of green fuzz would be rolling around the house, we vacuumed it when it arrived and again the next day (just to grab any of those loose fibers that might have pulled out from shipping) and so far so good. No issues with green fluff everywhere or pulled tufts from the vacuum suction. Whew.
At 8 x 11′, it’s definitely a more appropriate size for our giant 25 x 15′ living room (as opposed to our old 5 x 8′ rug that now lives in the guest room). And once we build a big long console table for the back of the sofa (and the sofa comes forward about a foot more onto the rug) it’ll look even more proportionate. In other words, not quite as much rug will show since the sofa will move forward on the rug for a more balanced look once we have that console table built.
And of course once we upgrade to a deeper/bigger media cabinet, hang curtains, and bring in more art, the room will hopefully start to feel more cohesive and make a lot more sense. Because right now it’s just a big gray box with a fuzzy green rectangle on the floor. Haha. But it’ll be fun to see how thing evolve as we layer in all sorts of other stuff over time. Hopefully it’ll fill in nicely. Just think of the rug as a big furry grass-like foundation that we’re laying- er, planting.
Speaking of the fun green color, we’re so psyched about the happy-go-lucky tone. It’s just perfect with the gray sectional, pewter walls, and dark beams. All of a sudden it feels chipper and a lot less cold in there. Like a space that we want to kick off our shoes and settle into. It’s definitely not your mother’s persian rug (or your father’s neutral one) but we’re having a lot more fun taking risks in this house. Even if it means doing things that might not have mass appeal – as long as something speaks strongly to us, we’re in. There’s actually freedom in letting go of the notion that your house should please everyone who walks in the door. It allows you be more true to yourself and your place starts to feel more special. Plus it means that your rooms won’t be in danger of looking like everyone else’s, which isn’t a bad thing either.
We loooved our first house for how soothing and serene it was, but in all honesty, we smile bigger here. Cheesy but true. It’s just such a fun and happy house – even though we’re just getting started and every room is about 80% incomplete. We definitely think Clara has inspired this whole Benjamin Button-ization of our style (read more about that here). Basically we’re loving the looser and less serious approach to making this house a home – and we’re quickly learning that playful pops of color, texture, and pattern can definitely happy up any room. Especially when mixed with neutrals like gray walls/furnishings/beams or white furnishings & a jute rug. Because if everything is a color and a pattern it might get cray-zay.
To tie into this big furry rug baby we’d love to add eight green parson’s chairs to our giant wooden dining room table for some nice whole house cohesion (there’s that “neutral + color = love” combination again). We’ll find those perfect chairs someday…
Oh and when it comes to keeping Kermit clean (we’re loving that reader recommended rug name – don’t Karl & Kermit sound perfect together?), as we mentioned in the post about ordering it, a friend of ours with three kiddos and a big hairy dog has a similar shag rug in her house and she swears it holds up to stains and kids like nobody’s business since crumbs/dust come out with a quick vacuum and you can actually subtly trim the long hairy tufts if anything catastrophic happens to “lift” the stain. So far it’s been amazing (but we obviously haven’t dropped anything major on it yet) so we’ll tell you the truth if we hate it in a month.
You might also notice some new pillows on Karl. We got two of those ruffled purple guys for $16 at HomeGoods. We also brought in our two green pillows from the bedroom just to see how something like that might work with the rug (we think they’re a little too yellow, but not terrible), and tossed three Sue The Napkins over other pillows that we had lying around to see what real Sue The Napkin pillow covers might look like when I get down to business and sew some. The pillow situation will definitely evolve over time though (I love those teal tones in Sue, so blue pillows might make an appearance someday, perhaps in lieu of green ones).
But back to the purple ruffle pillows for a second. The ruffle detail is really fun, but isn’t it amazing that John didn’t veto them? He’s usually so not on The Ruffle Train. I think he likes the idea of spicing things up with bright colors like navy and plum and deep teal so he just did one of those “sure, why not?” things. Love that man. Or maybe he’s just finally catching on that a happy wife = a happy life. Haha.
Now we just have to plan our big console table build because we can’t wait to see Karl scooched out (that’s a technical term) about a foot away from the wall. A little less rug should look perfect, plus it means there will finally be a place to put drinks (namely my hot tea every night) and two table lamps for reading (which means no more floor lamp in the doorway). Yipppppeeeeeeeeee! Yes I just wrote that. And yes it has ten “e”s on the end. Can you tell I’m excited? Oh yeah and Karl’s embarrassingly pale legs have got to go. So creepy.
And just for fun, here’s Clara breaking in the ol’ rug. Yes, that’s a plate on the ground in the background. No idea why.
She whips her cellphone back and forth. She whips her cellphone back and forth.
Psst- John’s parents just gave us their old leggy antique dresser which is perfect for our bedroom (it’s been in the family for years and John’s dad actually bought it from a cousin for $100 decades ago). It needs some love but it’s going to look awesome. And it’s f-r-e-e. More pics soon (you can see a “they-scooped-us” pic of it here thanks to the Washington Post).
Newspaper & (Some Big) Paper News
Considering that delivering The Washington Post was my first real job (because what 6th grader doesn’t like getting up at 5am everyday?), it’s kind of an “is this real life?” full circle moment for me that my current gig (this blog) has landed us in the pages of that very same newspaper. My dad (a.k.a. my newspaper delivery partner) has never been more proud. We had no idea it would be such a big write up (with a giant cover picture in the Local Living section, but after we got over our vanity (is my hair weird? does Clara look cute?) we couldn’t believe how awesome it was. Who are we and what did we do to deserve this? But enough blabbering. I gush when I’m excited.
Here are a few shots of the paper for ya (click ‘em to enlarge) and of course you can see them in the flesh if you get The Washington Post. And you can read most of the article online here, here, and here (there are three parts to the story, but some of the pics are different than the ones in the actual newspaper article). And if the article has been archived, you can download PDFs of the text here, here and here.
We especially loved this cool call-out thing they did with our old den about where we got stuff/what we paid for it:
As for the pics, the Washington Post scooped us on a few things. Haha. It takes us a few days for us to do projects, take pics, and write posts – so they slipped through and snapped photos of things we’ll be sharing in the next few days. Should be fun…
Anyway, thanks to Terri Sapienza for the write up (us? really?) and for coming down to our house to hang out for the interview (which couldn’t have been less scary even though it sounded crazy intimidating when we first heard that she wanted to do it). She was a blast to have over and we realized that her husband and I lead eerily similar lives (beyond being married to women with rhyming names).
Oh and how insane is it that they actually called Nate Berkus for a quote about us (remember when we met him here)? Sherry just about died when she saw that. There were no words for about ten minutes, which is a total record for her. Consider us flattered (or too giddy for our own good if you’re Sherry- really she’s doing that uncontrollable giggle thing over here). Here’s his quote:
“First of all, they’re adorable,” says talk show host and designer Nate Berkus. In the fall, the Petersiks appeared on “The Nate Berkus Show” as DIY experts and judges for a design challenge. “Their delivery is particularly charming and endearing, and their information is delivered in a smart way,” Berkus says. “ . . . I think Young House Love could easily transition into a TV program.”
How crazy is that? Seeing the paper this morning was like an out of body experience for both of us. We also think it’s hilarious that Nate thinks YHL could be a TV show, because we’ve actually been approached a few times about that over the past few years but are always quick to decline. We’re definitely TV people (I mean we like to watch it) but we don’t want to actually be TV people (as in, be on it). We’re much more comfortable hiding behind the safety of our computer screens. And as Sherry likes to say “we don’t wanna Jon & Kate ourselves, ya know?!” Besides, putting the blog on hold for weeks of filming might leave us with a serious case of withdrawal.
Side tangent officially over. Anyway, you may have noticed some other paper-related news revealed in the article: we’re in the very early stages of writing a book! Like a real one. That they’d actually have in Barnes & Noble. How crazy is that? When a few book agents and publishers approached us over a year ago, we figured that with all of the writing that we’ve done online each day over the past 3.5 years (over 1,752 posts and 891,000 words published) perhaps writing something offline could be a natural side project for us – especially if the topic is DIY and home stuff. Because you know that does it for us. But don’t worry, the blog will still be priority numero uno. After all it’s our first baby (well second, the birth order goes: Burger, YHL, Clara).
So after over a year of fine tuning our book proposal (yeah, it took forever, and ended up being 150+ pages long) we sent it out, held our breath, and were shocked and awed to be signed by Artisan/Workman. For a few weeks we were scared they would come to their senses, realize we’re dorks, and say nevermind – but holy bananas, it’s a done deal. And the process was kind of crazy and interesting, so for anyone else out there who’s looking to write a book proposal (and eventually a book), we’re planning a post about how it all went down and what that experience has been like for us.
There’s still an entire manuscript to be written, so it would be premature to say exactly what the book will be about, but we do know that it’s not going to be some fancy interior design coffee table book or a sordid behind-the-scenes tell-all novel with shirtless Fabio (or shirtless me) on the cover.
We’re aiming to capture the don’t-take-yourself-too-seriously DIY spirit of our site without regurgitating a lot of stuff that you’ve already seen slash read here (we want it to feel fresh and new). And of course it’ll have budget friendly ideas along with fast & easy projects that anyone can do (except if you’re tied to a pole). Since publishing a book takes much longer than publishing a blog post, we’re scheduled for a fall 2012 release – and we’re mucho excited. We couldn’t wait to spill the beans to you guys after lots of months spent biting our tongues and keeping cats in bags.
So that’s the news up our sleeve at the moment. I guess it’s only polite to ask – what’s new with you these days?
UPDATE: Check out this more recent post about the book-writing process.
Hammer Time
Guess what we’ve secretly been working on:
Hint: Read this.
More details soon. Until then, feel free to sing this. We can’t stop (and Burger probably wants to kill us).
